How to choose a branding agency
Undergoing a rebrand is a transformative journey for a business that can lead to increased sales, improved customer engagement and an enhanced employee experience. Here we dig into what to consider when assessing agencies as a critical first step in ensuring a stellar outcome.
Branding Before Breakfast Ep 194 How to choose a branding agency
Hi everyone. I’m Jodie, I’m the MD at Tiny Hunter, and if you are thinking about going through a rebrand, you might be wondering how on earth you go about choosing a branding agency and I don’t blame you. There are agencies of all shapes and sizes, and to be honest, I think branding has a branding problem and there is huge variety in the rigour and approach and deliverables when it comes to branding work.
Where to start? I guess a good place to start is the key phases of a rebrand project. You have the strategy phase, which is getting really in-depth in terms of understanding your business, your competitors, your customers. There might be research and then developing your positioning, very important. Because you can’t really design a brand identity without understanding how the business needs to be positioned. So once that’s done, you move to the creative bit, which everybody loves. The brand identity, how is the brand going to sound, look, feel. What’s that experience going to be like? And then once you’ve got that identity, of course it needs to be implemented. Your website, depending on your business, your packaging, your collateral. Whatever it might be, you need to deliver on that identity with integrity so that you can get the maximum out of your brand.
You need to think about what it is that you need in terms of this project. Do you need the strategic phase? Brand identity? Do you need the implementation, or do you have internal teams that do that sort of thing? It may vary, but it’s good to think about. Then you need to start looking at agencies. There’s all different kinds of agencies like I said. Do you want a branding agency or do you want there’s agencies that do many things and also do branding. Whichever direction you go, you want to make sure that they have a large amount of branding work in their portfolio and that it’s of a really high calibre. You’re googling, you’ve got a million tabs open if you’re like me. And like I said, so you’re looking at the work. They’ve got to have this world class portfolio, really amazing, inspiring branding work that you would be excited if that was your business.
You want to look at their client testimonials, what are client’s saying about not just the outcomes of the work, but what is it like actually working with them? Because the actual experience is really important as well. You want to work with people that you like, people that are approachable, people that are collaborative, Look at their about page, their team. Just try and get a sense of who they are. Just by doing some desktop research, you’re probably going to be able to make a large shortlist or a bit of a shortlist.
Ask other businesses for recommendations if they’ve been through this kind of experience. What was it like? Is there any learnings that they can share? Do they have an agency that they can recommend? And then you want to go to the next step, which is actually asking people for proposals. You want to engage with them. You want to have conversations with them. Maybe you know exactly what you want. You’ve got a clear brief, great tick. Then you can really compare apples for apples.
Maybe you have no idea, that is also absolutely fine, but you want to work with an agency that is quite strategic, that can really help you shape what it is that you need, and is asking really good questions. Digging into your objectives, your challenges, where you’re headed, where you want to be in the future. And, just that process alone should be giving you some aha moments, really making you think about your business and getting you excited about where this work is going to take you. You get some proposals in then what are you supposed to do? You still got to decide and it’s hard.
You could look at their get them to chat through the case studies not just, does the work look amazing, but what were the results like? What were the outcomes for those businesses? Are they still working with those businesses? Do they have really long term relationships? That’s always a good sign. And maybe you even want to ask them if you can call a client and ask about you, because then you’re going to learn a lot more about what it is actually like to work with them. You want to ask them who your actual team will be on the project. Because you might be really vibing with someone in the sales process, but you actually have no idea who the actual team on your project is going to be. So who is that team going to be?
You want to make sure there’s budget alignment. Obviously that’s probably the biggest one. Everyone always jumps straight to the money page in a proposal. You’re not looking for the cheapest, because the return on an investment in a successful rebrand is going to be significant but you need to be able to afford the work and not just the initial phase, but implementing it. So there needs to be some alignment. And what was that process like? In terms of getting the quote, chatting to them? Are they responsive? Are they approachable? Do you like them? It’s important to work with people that we like.
Also, what size is the agency? If you are a small to medium business, you maybe don’t want to work with a giant agency because you’re going to be for want of a better word, but less important in terms of their roster of clients. You want to work with a business that really cares about your business, that they’re really invested in making sure that you have the success that you deserve. I think that covers everything. Amazing work, measurable results, a great team that you’re going to like working with, the size of the agency. They’ve got happy, long standing clients, and the budget works, still important.
That’s it from me, it’s time for brekkie.
Written by: Jodie de Vries
Published: August 7, 2024